Sam Kinsley

"The City as Social Archipelago is a visualisation & analysis of activity across three cities on the Foursquare social network." Taken from scraped foursquare data. Not particularly inspiring or useful visualisations but the process is interesting.

A tool for mapping your foursquare locations on google maps, interestingly - you can also see other people's accounts mapped out, if you follow the link on the left.

New location-based social search tool FourWhere shows Foursquare tips and comments using Google Maps so you can search and discover what everyone is saying about nearby places. [via Mashable]

A set of workbooks targeted at specific age groups and professions, excerpt: "Your Digital Identity is everything you create on the Web, but also what other people might say about you there. Photographs on social networking sites, logs of chatroom conversations, newspaper articles about your role in a play, or your sporting victory. Even if you don't post material to the Web yourself, there is a good chance somebody else does, and we believe it is worth knowing about some of the issues."

"Making source codes available would safeguard users from infringements on their freedoms and prevent monopolies"

"Social media allows us to become familiar with people who in a previous life would be unknowable “stars” — and we all know what familiarity breeds. There’s a reason why reality stars fade from the limelight so quickly and why none of the movies on Project Greenlight became a success: to mix a metaphor, you can’t become a star if everyone has seen the sausage being made."

"A familiar challenge is to translate the seemingly unyielding demand to put a specific technology into something because it is expected, or because the name of the technology is the new great thing. It doesn’t matter what it is in particular — I use “doorknob” as a stand-in for whatever the latest “doorknob” of the day might be. For example — we’re going through an Augmented Reality “doorknob” phase presently, as most of you know.

What’s do I mean by doorknob? Doorknobs are things that rarely mean anything at all to normal human beings but they mean everything in the world to doorknob enthusiasts who spend most of their time trying to put doorknobs onto everything they possibly can — coffee tables, lampposts, patio chaises, kid’s t-shirts, wrist watches, fancy cameras, car dashboards, toasters, clock radios, keychains, tea kettles, baseball hats.. I could go on, but I’ll let the “doorknob” enthusiasts go crazy themselves."

"Shopkick is a dream come true for location app junkies: A mobile app that will know your whereabouts and will automatically check you in once you’ve arrived at a given location. It’s also a great boon for brands. This kind of auto-checkin eliminates cheating and allows companies and brands to target and reward the true faithful with points and real-world rewards.
The service uses Foursquare’s API, and today it announced a partnership with Best Buy and upcoming deals with Macy’s and other retailers. Shopkick’s Signal technology doesn’t require users to check in, and it verifies that the user is actually, physically present in a retail location before unlocking any promotional perks. Users can get access to gift cards, movies, music downloads, gadgets and more with their actions. One of the rewards for actions, which include walk-ins and item-scans, is a virtual currency called 'kickbucks'."

"Who would pay to use Twitter? Nobody, according to a study by the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California Annenberg School For Communication And Journalism"

"PhotoCity is a game played outdoors, with any camera, even a cell-phone camera. By taking photos of buildings around your city or school campus, you can earn points, capture flags, and virtually own your favorite buildings, all while contributing to a large-scale 3D reconstruction!"

"The government's first attempt at crowdsourcing its coalition programme has ended without a single government department expressing a willingness to alter any policy."

"Attention, at least the kind we care about, is an intrinsically scarce resource [ 4 ]. Consider yours, right now. You are reading this paper, or more likely, since it is intended to be delivered at a conference, listening to me speaking it. You have a certain stock of attention at your disposal, and right now, a large proportion of the stock available to you is going to me, or to my words. Note that if I am standing in front of you it is difficult to distinguish between paying attention to me and paying attention to my words or thoughts; you can hardly do one without doing the other. If you are just reading this, assuming it gets printed in a book, the fact that your attention is going to me and not just to what I write may be slightly less obvious. So it is convenient to think of being in the audience at this conference in order to consider what attention economics is all about."

"Innovation in Silicon Valley is [...] an inherently social process: it is only through participating in a community that entrepreneurs pioneer the technological and commercial breakthroughs that have fueled rapid regional growth. And yet without opportunities for intensely competitive and single-minded individuals to achieve personal status and wealth, this self-organizing and technologically dynamic industrial system would simply grind to a halt. Frederick Terman's brilliance lay in his ability to envision and foster a technical community that transcends the boundaries between individuals, firms, and other local institutions–and one that balances the ongoing tension between individual autonomy and collective endeavor."

"The instantaneous nature of the Net is both its marvel and menace. We feel a need for speed. Thus the compulsion to answer emails and tweets quickly, without thinking things through. Impermanence is seen as a virtue, a signal of a world in constant change (where change is a buzzword). Like, nothing is forever, dude.

Civility has gone out the window when you can hide behind the anonymity of the Internet. It's easier to be rude, even hateful -in the guise of "freedom of expression" -than it is to formulate a reasoned argument. (Indeed, reasoning and civility are slowing-down processes in themselves.) As an absolutist on freedom of expression, I oppose anti-hate speech laws -alas, hate speech is the price we pay for freedom. But that's no excuse for indulging in it because you can get away with it."

Nice and simple explanations: "While tasting coffee, you should try to discern whether the flavor, body, acidity and aroma of the coffee is pleasant, or unpleasant."

"Follow ThingMagic’s 100 Uses of RFID campaign to learn about innovative ways in which Radio Frequency Identification and Sensing (RFIDS) is being used to automate data collection, identification, and location systems worldwide. Track the updates below, follow the ThingMagic RFID Blog and join the discussion on Twitter using hashtag #RFID100."

"I'm a fairly competitive person. I like to win. And thanks to many hours spent in front of the screen, I find myself pretty motivated when I see an opportunity to "level up." But that being said, I still question the rush lately to add "game mechanics" to every new product and experience. As we've written before, the arguments for doing so are compelling. Game mechanics can be fun and rewarding. They can increase user engagement and can aid user adoption, referral, and retention. But does the addition of levels, leader-boards, and virtual trophies necessarily lead to a better user experience? Of course not."

"I work in online marketing and it's no secret that I blog, tweet and check in on Foursquare. Social media is largely responsible for some of my closest friendships. I've never felt unsafe participating and generally trust that the community will police itself and follow the unwritten rules. But sometimes I don't think about the consequences. Then I had a bit of a wake-up call."

""The issue with location-based information is that it exposes another layer of personal information that, frankly, we haven't had to think much about: our exact physical location at anytime, anywhere," explained the creators of PleaseRobMe.com, a website set up to expose how vulnerable Twitter users can be when displaying location-based messages, earlier this year. "If you're comfortable being a human homing beacon, that's fine, we just want you to be fully aware of what that means and the potential risks it might involve."

"Are location-based mobile applications like Foursquare, Loopt and Gowalla just hype? That's the potential, at-a-glance takeaway from a new study released today by Forrester Research. Only 4% of U.S. online adults have ever used location-based apps such as these, and only 1% out of those that use them do so more than once per week. Meanwhile, 84% said they weren't familiar with these apps."

"When mobile augmented reality experiences started popping up on smartphones in the last year, the majority of the apps helped people find businesses and other points-of-interest. Now as the social Web becomes increasingly mobile, the data it provides is more likely to contain location information. Foursquare and Gowalla are obvious examples of the growing social location trend, but even Twitter and YouTube can now link tweets and videos to a specific location."

"Over the last few years the consensus about privacy on the Internet seems to have changed a lot. A few years ago, people were still hesitant about using their real names online, but nowadays people are comfortable sharing their exact location with the whole world. Where does this change in consensus come from? Are people starting to feel too comfortable? We're not sure, but over-sharing might result in more risk and unintended consequence than one might think, especially in the long run."

"With universities facing swingeing funding cuts, a handful are already officially classified as "at risk" and in danger of complete financial collapse. Vince Cable, the Secretary of State with responsibility for Universities has warned that if that does happen - there'll be no Government bail-out. Meanwhile as the cuts bite, courses are being scrapped and jobs are being axed. We hear from one university where one third of the Board of Governors have stepped down after a report into their effectiveness described them as naive after presiding over an unsustainable annual deficit. "

Guardian article about the 'Time Travellers' Guide to Bristol': "The Time Traveller's Guide to Bristol project will launch a website later this week and an iPhone app at on July 28, allowing users to browse archive material and upload their own images of contemporary Bristol. It features 100 years of film and photography focused on six areas of Bristol, and invites users to superimpose archive material on a 3D model of contemporary shots - some of which were badly damaged during WW2, like Castle Park."

Augmented reality style mobile device-mediated tour guides of Bristol using historical archive material to make the past present in the users' experience of the city.

Excellent presentation by Gene Becker outlining the present state of what some call pervasive media or ubiquitous media or locative media, which goes beyond the fad of augmented reality.

Discussion of whether apple's vertically integrated apps-ecology is a part of the web or is it perhaps a closed system.

Interesting and provactive argument: "Open data is not a magic recipe for righting wrongs. What will move things on is the stories that communities tell about their situations and their possible futures."

Guardian article discusses local approaches for open data: "A great opportunity now presents for a truly open form of governance. Working together as central, regional, local with the creative input of the agile software developer community we can begin to shape what a transparent state might look like for the benefit of citizens. So here are a couple of do's and don't's for councils starting out on this road."

Nic Nova discusses the design fiction of the WIRED 'found' illustrations.

"What the creators of the Sci-Fi Airshow have done is extend that fascinating imaginary into the realm of science fiction flying machines. They make the flying machines somehow ordinary insofar as they appear at a typical airshow with families and fans enjoying the machines, the sunshine and a chat with a pilot. In this way, the objects become tangible."

A soundwalk to be experienced in the rain.

More AR-type overlays of physical reality with images of the past. Similar to 'Time Travellers' Guide to Bristol': "History Pin [historypin.com] hopes to become the largest user-generated archive of the world's historical images and stories. The website acts like a digital time machine, and uses Google Maps and Street View technology to allow the wide public to dig out, upload and pin their own old photos, as well as the stories behind them, onto an interactive map. Uniquely, Historypin lets people layer old images onto modern Street View scenes, providing a series of geo-located time tunnel views into the past."